Bart Ehrman, Jesus & Daniel’s Son of Man
- samshmn
- 16 hours ago
- 8 min read
Bart Ehrman is among a few fringe scholars who think that Jesus’ Apocalyptic Son of Man sayings are not about himself, but are referring to someone else. Despite believing this to be the case, Ehrman does admit that this is not the view of the Gospel writers, since he acknowledges that they all believed that Jesus was indeed referring to himself as this cosmic Judge of the earth whom the prophet Daniel spoke of.
Here is what Ehrman writes in his book How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee, published by HarperOne in 2014, Chapter 3. Did Jesus Think He Was God?, pp. 106-109. All emphasis will be mine.
Dissimilarity and the Message of Jesus
A number of the apocalyptic sayings in our earliest Synoptic sources are not the kinds of things that early Christians would have wanted to place on Jesus’s lips. I give you three examples.
First, in the sayings about the “Son of Man” that I quoted above, there is a peculiarity that many people gloss over without thinking about it. This is somewhat complicated, but the issue is this. Early Christians, including the authors of the Gospels, thought that Jesus was the Son of Man, the cosmic judge of the earth who was to return from heaven very soon. The Gospels in fact identify Jesus as the Son of Man in a number of places. Do such identifications pass the criterion of dissimilarity? Obviously not: if you think Jesus is the cosmic judge, you would have no difficulty coming up with sayings in which Jesus is identified as the Son of Man. But what if you have sayings in which Jesus is actually not identified as the Son of Man? Even better, what if you have sayings in which it appears that Jesus is talking about someone other than himself as the Son of Man? Those are sayings that Christians would have been less likely to make up, since they thought he was the Son of Man.
Look again at the sayings given above. In none of them is there any hint that Jesus is talking about himself when he refers to the Son of Man coming in judgment on the earth. Readers naturally assume that he is talking about himself either because they believe that Jesus is the Son of Man or because they know that elsewhere the Gospels identify him as the Son of Man. But nothing in these sayings would lead someone to make the identification. These sayings are not phrased the way early Christians would have been likely to invent if they, rather than Jesus, had come up with them.
Or consider another saying, from Mark 8:38. Pay close attention to the wording: “Whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of that one will the Son of Man be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.” Now, anyone who already thinks that Jesus is the Son of Man may casually assume that here he is talking about himself —whoever is ashamed of Jesus, Jesus will be ashamed of him (that is, he will judge him) when he comes from heaven. But that’s not actually what the saying says. Instead, it says that if anyone is ashamed of Jesus, of that person the Son of Man will be ashamed when he comes from heaven. Nothing in this saying makes you think that Jesus is talking about himself. A reader who thinks Jesus is talking about himself as the Son of Man has brought that understanding to the text, not taken it from the text.
This is probably not the way an early Christian would have made up a saying about the Son of Man. You can imagine someone inventing a saying in which it is crystal clear that Jesus is talking about himself: “If you do this to me, then I, the Son of Man, will do that to you.” But it is less likely that a Christian would make up a saying that seems to differentiate between Jesus and the Son of Man. This means the saying is more likely authentic.
My second example is from one of my favorite passages of the entire Bible, the story of the last judgment of the sheep and the goats (Matt. 25:31–46; this is from M). We are told that the Son of Man has come in judgment on the earth, in the presence of the angels, and he sits on his throne. He gathers all people before him and separates them “as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats” (25:32). The “sheep” are on his right side and the “goats” on his left. He speaks first to the sheep and welcomes them to the kingdom of God that has been prepared especially for them. And why are they allowed to enter this glorious kingdom? “Because I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me” (25:35–36). The righteous are taken aback and don’t understand: they have never done these things for him—in fact they have never even seen him before. The judge tells them, “Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me” (25:40). He then speaks to the “goats” and sends them away to the “eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (25:41), and he tells them why. They didn’t feed him when he was hungry, give him a drink when he was thirsty, welcome him as a stranger, clothe him when he was naked, visit him when he was sick and in prison. They too don’t understand—they have never seen him before either, so how could they have refused to help him? And to them he says, “Truly, I say, to you, as you did it not to one of the least of these, you did it not to me” (25:45). And so we are told that the sinners go off to eternal punishment and the righteous off to eternal life.
It is a spectacular passage. And it almost certainly is something very close to what Jesus actually said. And why? Because it is not at all what the early Christians thought about how a person gains eternal life. The early Christian church taught that a person is rewarded with salvation by believing in the death and resurrection of Jesus. The Apostle Paul, for example, was quite adamant that people could not earn their salvation by doing the things the law required them to do, or in fact by doing anything at all. If that were possible, there would have been no reason for Christ to have died (see, for example, Gal. 2:15–16, 21). Even in Matthew’s Gospel the focus of attention is on the salvation that Jesus brings by his death and resurrection. In this saying of Jesus, however, people gain eternal life not because they have believed in Christ (they have never even seen or heard of the Son of Man), but because they have done good things for people in need. This is not a saying that early Christians invented. It embodies the views of Jesus. The Son of Man will judge the earth, and those who have helped others in need will be the ones who will be rewarded with eternal life.
My third example of a saying that almost certainly passes the criterion of dissimilarity is an apocalyptic saying that will be important for our discussion later in this chapter. In a saying preserved for us in Q, Jesus tells his twelve disciples that in the “age to come, when the Son of Man is seated upon his glorious throne, you also will sit upon twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel” (Matt. 19:28; see Luke 22:30). It doesn’t take much reflection to see why this is something that Jesus is likely to have said—that it was not put on his lips by his later followers after his death. After Jesus died, everyone knew that he had been betrayed by one of his own followers, Judas Iscariot. (That really did happen: it is independently attested all over the map, and it passes the criterion of dissimilarity. Who would make up a story that Jesus had such little influence over his own followers?) But to whom is Jesus speaking in this saying? To all the Twelve (meaning the twelve disciples). Including Judas Iscariot. He is telling them that they all, Judas included, will be rulers in the future kingdom of God. No Christian would make up a saying that indicated that the betrayer of Jesus, Judas Iscariot himself, would be enthroned as a ruler in the future kingdom. Since a Christian would not have made the saying up, it almost certainly goes back to the historical Jesus.
Elsewhere in the book, Ehrman says this in relation to Mark’s view of Jesus’ divinity:
Jesus as Son of God at His Baptism
Brown does appear to be right that at some times and places, after the initial belief that God had exalted Jesus at his resurrection, some Christians came to think that the exaltation had happened before his public ministry. That is why he could do spectacular deeds such as healing the sick, casting out demons, and raising the dead; that is why he could forgive sins as God’s representative on earth; that is why he could occasionally reveal his glory—he was already adopted to be God’s Son at the very outset of his ministry, when John the Baptist baptized him.
The Baptism in Mark
This appears to be the view of the Gospel of Mark, in which there is no word of Jesus’s preexistence or of his birth to a virgin. Surely if this author believed in either view, he would have mentioned it; they are, after all, rather important ideas. But no, this Gospel begins by describing the baptism ministry of John the Baptist and indicates that like other Jews, Jesus was baptized by him. But when Jesus comes up out of the water, he sees the heavens split open, the Spirit of God descends upon him as a dove, and a voice from heaven says, “You are my beloved Son, in you I am well pleased” (Mark 1:9–11).
This voice does not appear to be stating a preexisting fact. It appears to be making a declaration. It is at this time that Jesus becomes the Son of God for Mark’s Gospel.11 Immediately after this, Jesus begins his spectacular ministry, not only proclaiming the imminent arrival of God’s kingdom, but also healing all who are sick, showing that he is more powerful than the demonic spirits in the world —so that he is no mere mortal—and even raising the dead. He is the Lord of life, already during his ministry. He demonstrates that he has been given authority to forgive sins committed not against himself, but either against others or against God. His opponents declare that “no one can forgive sins but God alone.” Jesus tells them that he, the Son of Man, has the authority on earth to forgive sins.
Jesus’s glory can also be seen in his great miracles—multiplying loaves and fishes for the multitudes, commanding the storm to be still, walking on water. Halfway through the Gospel, Jesus reveals his true identity to three of his disciples, as he goes on a mountain in the presence of Peter, James, and John and is transfigured into a radiant being while Moses and Elijah appear in order to speak with him (symbolizing the fact that he is the one predicted in the law [= Moses] and the prophets [= Elijah]). Jesus is no mere mortal. He is the glorious Son of God who has come in fulfillment of God’s plan.
If one always has to ask “in what sense” is Jesus divine, for Mark, Jesus is divine in the sense that he is the one who has been adopted to be the Son of God at his baptism, not later at his resurrection. (Ibid., Chapter 6. The Beginning of Christology: Christ as Exalted to Heaven, p. 237-239)
Further Reading